Ep 135: Thoughts From This Past Weekend's Retreat
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I wanted to jump in here this morning and do a little bit different of an episode for me. It's not really a teaching episode on this Tuesday, but it's more of a reflection on what went on this past weekend. So we hosted the first inaugural Girlfriends on Podcast retreat, and I had it here at my home.

Which, in really full transparency, made me very, very nervous. It was an exclusive invite. I mean, I had to know you in order for you to get invited to this retreat. But it still made me super nervous to invite people into my home. They could see my home studio. We set everything up in the basement. You know, my family was running around all weekend. The dog was here. But oh my gosh, you guys, it's been 48 hours since everyone left. And I am still worried.

riding high from the weekend. So if any of you have ever been to a really epic retreat where you connected in deep and meaningful ways with other people, or you learned something really powerful to go back and implement into your business, or maybe you just flat out enjoyed it. I mean, my kids come home from summer camp every single summer, and they are already dying to go back before we even get home. And then without a doubt, they always have...

I call it like the camp post doldrums. They are almost depressed for like a full day because they've been surrounded by these amazing people. They've been having so much fun and they miss them. Well, I'm kind of feeling that way right now. Like it's Monday morning. I'm sitting in my office.

I'm struggling to get really motivated to get back into the business because what I really want to do is rewind the clock and go back to this past weekend. So let me kind of fill you in on why I'm feeling that way and what transpired. And I will back the bus up all the way to this time last week. Have you ever had that experience in life where you're

You start to wonder if you're really on the right path or doing the right thing because the universe is against you. Well, last week was that way for me. So I'm prepping to have all these people at my home. I'm trying to think through the little details like, hey, I'm going to serve breakfast. I want to have a good mixture of fruits and granolas and yogurts, but maybe also warm stuff like ice.

Hot oatmeal or eggs or sausage, turkey sausage, like all of these things are going through my head as a hostess of an event. And lo and behold, the universe took control. The air conditioning unit, one of them that powers my main bedroom, went kaput. I mean, this thing didn't even drizzle out, fizzle out. It wasn't even trying to give me any air. All of a sudden, my master bedroom is 98 degrees Celsius.

all day long, even at night. Now, I live in the state of Georgia. So if this is your first time joining in, I live in the Atlanta area. It is hot in the summer. We have a lot of humidity. It is, quite frankly, sometimes miserable. And you want at night to just go to sleep and be, you know, cool and relaxed. Well, I couldn't do that. And of course, because of the world that we live in right now,

We couldn't get the technician out immediately. When he did get out four or five days later, like we still right now, I have no air conditioning in my master bedroom because we can't get the parts in and we can't get the pieces that we need. Long story short, I didn't get to sleep very well at night. So my husband and I kind of split up

He went downstairs to the basement where we do have a bedroom, but he also, he took one of our children with him because that same air conditioning unit that affects our bedroom affects one of their bedrooms. And so he took a kid with him.

so that they could get some sleep because they have school and everything else. I was sleeping on the couch in my living room, which is not bad. I mean, I don't mind a good couch sleep, but when you know you need good rest because you're leading up into a powerful weekend or a weekend that you know could potentially exhaust you and school is starting back for the first time all summer, like it's just a lot to be sleeping on your couch. And there I found myself. So if that wasn't bad enough,

That began on Monday. On Wednesday, guess what? We got a knock on the door. It was the water company. And I was like, what are you guys doing here? I pay my bill. You know, like, you're not here to turn the water off. I'm really good about paying my bills. And the water guy was like, ma'am,

I'm here because I went to read your meter and it is sky high. You've got a leak somewhere. And I'm like, oh, my God, you've got to be kidding me. Well, there's no water in my home. I couldn't hear water running. Lo and behold, though, we walk around to the side of the house and some idiot that constructed my home, they put the exit to the septic tank.

and all the irrigation and all the pool equipment within like an eight by eight radius. And so it is a hot mess underground right around in there. Well, we walk around to the side of the home and y'all, it was ankle deep. The water was just spewing. I think we had done like 5,600 gallons in a week. I mean, it was ridiculous. And I'm on septic. So I'm used to like a $19 water bill. Yeah, we're talking a $4,000 water bill at this point.

So I'm freaking out. We're trying to figure out, you know, which piece of the water main line we need to cut off. Where's all this water coming from? What's happening? We finally got that done. But now I'm like, oh, my gosh, it's Wednesday. Everyone's coming on Friday. The kids have started school. And oh, by the way, I've now got to get an air conditioning fixed and a leak in my water system fixed. And I've got all these people coming this weekend. So I'm like, servicemen cannot be here. They just cannot be here.

traipsing around my house. We're recording content. So I'm kind of freaking out at this point. And then the third thing is

fell through the roof. Not literally, but metaphorically speaking. So we had taken my car into the Lincoln car dealership back in March because it was having, it had to have something fixed. And if you listen to my episode a couple of weeks ago about guest service meeting bad customer service or great marketing and meets bad customer service, that's where I talk about what had gone down with my car. We finally made the decision with Lincoln that they were just going to buy the thing back from me. Like they couldn't,

figure out for themselves even where on their service lot my car was. And so I was like, well, I'm, you know, I'm tired of not having a car. It's time. And so they bought the car back for me. And last week, we purchased a new car. It's an Audi A320.

I'm thrilled with it. I'm excited by it. This is awesome. But the third piece that kind of rocked my world last week was I had actually paid off my Lincoln. So we did not have a car payment. And then all of a sudden we had to go buy a new car, which was not what we were expecting, obviously, at that point. But I had to have a vehicle. So we bought a vehicle and now I've got another car payment.

Grand scheme of things, not that big of a deal in my life. However, when you're looking at a five-day period leading into having a bunch of women at your home for the weekend, and all of a sudden you have to have a new air conditioning unit, you've got a $4,000 water bill because of the leak, and you pick up a car payment, there was a little bit of anxiety in my life leading into the weekend. I'm not going to lie.

I didn't even consider canceling it, but I was just worried that I would not be my normal self or able to really pour into the women like I wanted to because of everything else that was going on. Well, from the second the first woman walked through my door on Friday, all of those fears of mine dissipated. Here's what was so great. Almost every single person who was here this weekend

I've never met in person. Like I've met them on Zoom. We've done interviews back and forth. We kind of knew who each other was. You know, we knew that we had great vibes, great rapport, but really only one of them I'd actually met before in real life. But when they all got there Friday night, it was as if we had been lifelong besties.

for, you know, since kindergarten. Not one moment awkwardness occurred. Everyone walked in, they grabbed a beverage, they started doing what podcasters do best, which is talking.

At one point, I was like, I just sat back. I sat back and just observed for a good half hour. I'm not sure I actually said a word, which is fine with me because they were connecting so well with each other. And I love that a little community of women can come together and do that. So we had everything here this weekend from podcasters who were like me. They talk business. They talk, you know, tactical solutions to marriage counselors and things.

Quite frankly, like, you know, those kind of mindset coaches, they were all here this weekend and everyone had something to say and everyone had something to contribute to each other. So Friday night, we had all these appetizers set out.

We grabbed our plates. We grabbed our drinks. We walked down to the fire pit. I did not light the fire because it was so hot in the state of Georgia that I probably would have melted people's faces off. But we sat around the fire pit with our drinks and our snacks, and we just opened up to each other about what's going on in life. And I had planned ahead of time a few conversation topics because a good hostess will always do that. Like,

I'll always have something to pull out of my rear end that we can talk about in the event we have awkward silences. But we didn't. We started going around the fire pit constantly.

We were telling each other, like, why did we start our business? How has it evolved through the years? What does the podcast really do for it? And then the conversation flipped and turned more into, hey, what's going on in our personal lives right now? You know, we've got one woman here this weekend that was having marital issues and one woman that was having a major health crisis. And then we had our, you know, our 30 year old that's all bright and chipper and perky over there and like nothing's wrong in the world.

But we were all able to look at each other and say, how can we amplify you? How can we support you? What do you need right now from us? And it really was like going to camp in high school or middle school and having those besties sit around the fire and getting to know each other. And I can tell you from Friday night alone, there are connections that formed there that will always be there. These women will be connecting with each other.

outside of the container that I put them in. And they will work with each other. They will build off of each other and they will have this amazing connection. I felt it. I know it. I just, I continue to receive it even now, 48 hours later. So once I finally did, and I had to say at one point, you guys, I love you so much, but it's late and we have a big day tomorrow. And so I need y'all to go home and get, you know, get some rest. So they did. I sent them back to their hotels.

They came back the next morning. And here's where it really got interesting for me. You started to see the nuances of these women past just what they wanted to talk about and who they were in that. But like you found out the early to get their girls, the ones who you're like, hey, this thing starts at 8 a.m. And they're there. You know, they are at your house at 750. And then there's the girls that you're like, well, breakfast is from 8 to 9 and they showed up at 915.

And, you know, that's that point where you're like, OK, so maybe next time I do this, I won't have an optional hour of breakfast. I will just tell you what time to show up because now I understand like, oh, not everyone's like me that shows up early. People get here late. There was no traffic. There was really no reason to be here late. This is just how they roll.

And that's OK. When you have big events and someone gets there late, you can just start on time anyway and they can slip in the back. When you have a small, powerful retreat like I did this weekend, you can't really start without them when they're 50 percent or so of your audience. And so that was really interesting to me to kind of like watch those little nuances formed. But it was also fun because I noticed everyone who walked in my home just took their shoes off.

And I said, you guys, I know I have hardwood floors, but I've also got a 95 pound lab that runs rampant through this house. Like, we don't care if you have shoes on because she's going to mess the house up enough on her own. She's going to ruin the floors. She already has, you know, and they were all like, no, we're just so comfortable that we're good being barefoot. Like, this is awesome. And so that made me all warm and fuzzy because I'm like, oh, good. I've created an atmosphere where you're good enough just walking in.

Throw your jacket down, take your shoes off, settle in for the morning. So we did. And we had an amazing morning of conversation. Like I brought my friend Sarah in and she walked them through thoughts on networking that I guarantee most of them had never thought about. You know, we all know what networking is. You go and you talk to people.

But Sarah really honed in on the how do you intentionally network with people when you're a podcaster? You know, looking at the difference between I always want to find the women who need to know about my podcast or I want to be connected with the women who need to be on my podcast or in some instances, the men to.

So we had great learning. And then I got up to talk to them. And I had originally planned to dive into a really good outline of how to have an episode that will convert your clients. I'm sorry, that will convert your listeners into clients. Because let's be honest, we're all here to make money. I mean, I love you all. Thank you so much for listening from the bottom of my heart. And if you never purchase anything from me, keep listening and that's okay. But I do have to support my family. And everyone else does too. So I was like, well, I'm going to...

I'm going to walk them through what I use, like my little strategy outline on when I want to convert a listener to a client. I never even got to that point because they had other questions. It was almost as if they walked in and they were like, nope, this is what we need out of this weekend. This is what we want you to help us with. And so we really spent more time talking about the difference between short show notes and long show notes, why you would put them on a blog,

and not just leave them in your Apple podcast player, how you can effectively use those show notes to pick up SEO, to gain visibility, you know, and other tactics around the website piece of your podcast, which speaks to me because I'm such a tech dork at the bottom of my heart. I really am. I'm a numbers nerd. I'm a tech dork.

all the things and I just put my notes down. I was like, all right, let's just have a conversation on why I do the things that I do. There's always a method behind my madness.

And let's see if it makes sense in your business. And so for an hour and a half, that's what we talked about. And they were all engaged and they were taking notes and they were asking questions. And I thought, OK, the thing I love about a little retreat like this is you can pivot so easily and you can walk in much like I did at the fire pit the night before. I can walk in with topics to discuss, but we don't have to say on those. We can really pour into what you actually need right now.

What is making the most sense that you need to take away from the weekend? So we did that. We had a great Q&A session. Lunch was a little bit of a shit show. I'm not going to lie. These things always happen on retreat. Something goes wrong. Well, I passed around the phone. I'm like, you guys, order your lunch. This is how we're going to roll today. I thought that I hit submit on the lunch thing. I didn't. So I

45 minutes later, when I'm standing by my front door, I'm like, where is DoorDash? Like, why are our sandwiches and our soups not here from Panera? Come to find out, the order had never gone through.

So then I had to go back downstairs. We had to reorder some stuff. I had to resubmit. Now it was going to take another hour or so before it got here. So I had to pivot the schedule a little bit, which rocked my world internally. But externally, you just have to roll with things when you are the hostess. So we went straight into content creation. And I think that was partially my favorite piece of the entire day. I got to sit down behind the microphone with people.

and do live recordings. And then I got to sit on the couch and watch others do live recordings. And then we got to give feedback to each other and really invest that time and energy into saying, that was an amazing episode. Here's what intrigued me about it, or here's what I think you could do better next time. So we got to learn from each other on how to be better podcasters. We got to hear each other and how our tones change when you're in front of someone. We did

coined the term podcast breath, which means you talk differently. You have a different tonality and a different inflection in your voice when you're actually talking with someone than when you're sitting behind your microphone like I am right now by myself. And so we all talked about the fact that we want to be very conscious when we're doing a solo episode to not have podcast breath. And podcast breath is when you take on a different tone to how you speak into the microphone and it's not actually how you talk, like it's not realistic.

And so we all made accountability to each other that if we ever hear each other on a solo episode going into podcast breath, like I'm going to call you out on that, girlfriend, because nobody wants to hear you preach and teach at them. They just want to hear you as if you were sitting across the table from them, which is how I'm envisioning you right now. Like you are totally in my head sitting across my desk from me.

And so that content creation piece of it was just fascinating to me. Everyone goes about their process just a little bit differently. But the reality is we all create content kind of the same way. It was very interesting to watch some people struggle to record in real time. And it was very interesting to watch how some of the conversations flowed.

Every single person said at the end of their episode, oh my gosh, I felt like I was up there for 45 minutes to an hour and not one of us recorded for more than 20 minutes, which I love. I love a 20 minute episode. And so, you know, learning that about yourself, learning how to time your episodes, just getting that in real life experience, I think is one of the most invaluable pieces I could have given these women this weekend, aside from the deep down personal connections that they all made.

And I cannot wait over the next couple of weeks to bring you snippets of those episodes that we created. I will be playing a lot of them over the next few weeks because I want you to hear what we did this past weekend. And I want to invite you that if you are listening to this right now and you're having some major FOMO, because I'll tell you,

I'm already having FOMO from the past weekend and I was there. Like I'm so ready to go back to that past weekend. I'm going to do it again. I'm going to do it in November. And one of the topics that I already know in advance we will be discussing is a little bit of business strategy for next year. I want whoever comes and shows up in November for this Girlfriends with Podcasts retreat, I want you to not only walk away with content creation or

or new besties. I also want you to walk away with a strategy and some intent walking into your next year because just showing up on your podcast is never going to get you to the level that you want to get to, but showing up with strategy and intent and purpose will. And so it's kind of like business planning.

for your next year. That's what I want to do in November. That's one of my strengths. It's something I'm very, very good at. I told the women this past weekend, my spreadsheets have spreadsheets have spreadsheets. I, again, I'm a tech geek and a numbers nerd, and I like a plan. I like to know what I'm doing. I like to have it semi-outlined. The plan can evolve. The plan can rotate. But I like to sort of know through a 12-month period where I am, where I'm going,

And then plan on how I'm going to get there. Because with no end in mind, you just don't know where you're going. So if that is something that you were like, yes, Joanne, I want to be there on that. Girlfriend, I want you here too. And so you can text the word retreat.

to my texting community at 678-736-8055. I will put you on the wait list so that when I open up seats in space, because remember, I only let about 10 people in on these. They're very intimate. They're very private and they're very powerful.

So if you want to be on that list, make sure you text the word retreat to 678-736-8055. That is where I will send out the very first round of invites to come join me in November here in Atlanta for one of the best weekends I think that you could put and invest in yourself for your business.

That's it for now, guys. I'm going to go keep just marinating on my past weekend because I'm still riding so high from it. And I will see you guys same time, same place next week.

You just finished another episode of the B-Word Podcast. Cheers to you. If I were with you, I would literally pop a big old bottle of Prosecco and pour you a glass. Since I'm not, why don't you do the next best thing and share this episode with one of your besties? Because we all know you've got that one girlfriend that needs to hear it. Thanks, friend.

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